Barney Frank: “I am struck by the extent to which the right wing seems not to understand how unpopular their agenda is. It is their…”

“I am struck by the extent to which the right wing seems not to understand how unpopular their agenda is. It is their inability to get a majority for it that keeps us here so many days after we should have gone. It is also interesting to watch them try to deny the very, very deep conservatism of the nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Alito. They are hiding his views on abortion. Recently, in the Boston Globe, an article by Kenneth Starr and Ronald Cass tried to explain away one of the most astounding examples of his extreme conservatism: his opposition to the basic principle of one man, one vote as articulated by the Warren Court. And given the difficulty of trying to get someone confirmed who has views that extreme, these two advocates tried to explain it away by claiming it was all about gerrymandering and proportional representation. Fortunately, Professor Michael Tolley of Northeastern University wrote a very good letter exposing the inaccuracy of this attempted defense of Judge Alito and reaffirming that in fact what was involved in his 1985 statement was an objection to that basic principle of democracy articulated by the Warren Court, that it should be one man, one vote. The following are the inaccurate article and the correction: Alito's Sticky Thicket (By Kenneth W. Starr and Ronald A.…”